#i keep attracting queer mentees...how did this happen...

[queenieofaces]

A question from one of my students: do folks have surveys or censuses of queer* communities and/or experiences that they particularly like or think are well-designed? I have already sent a couple their way (Ace Census, of course), but if there are any others that stand out to folks...

*expansively defined--either of queer communities as a whole or specific subsets of identities/experiences is fine

[longinglook]

I may or may not have spent my entire Sunday binge watching all of I told sunset about you and Gaya sa pelikula and now I have so many thoughts and feelings that I need to write about them so here we go! Under a read more (if tumblr allows me to) because it’s 2k words hehe

First of all, I knew next to nothing about both shows before starting them. I had seen a couple of gifs here and there, but really had no idea what I was in for.

I started with I told sunset about you, which has 3 episodes out of 5 out. All I knew is that it was going to be beautiful and possibly sad, and it was. Everything about this show is so high quality, from the audio to the dialogue to the locations to the acting, just wow. The production is better than a lot of movies I’ve seen, and every technical aspect is perfect. I am really loving the plot so far as well, I find the childhood friendship to stubborn rivalry to grown up friendship again very relatable. I think it’s a very common experience for a lot of non straight folks to develop an extremely close bond with a same sex friend when you’re too young to realize what you’re actually feeling for them until you’re a lot older and suddely the jealousy and possessivenes all make sense.

I love the recurring themes sprinkled throughout the episodes, starting from the chinese vocabulary that expresses the core thoughts of the two main characters: rival, intimacy, secret, male protagonist, as promised. They could easily be the episode titles, or the names of imaginary sections the show could be divided into. It’s a great way to integrate metaphors and deeper meaning into the plot.

That’s how most of the communication goes in this show, deep emotions are never conveyed through words because words are scary and loud and they can’t be taken back once they’re out there. The plot advances though stares and gestures and touch and gorgeous shots of the landscape. The pace is slow with hour-long episodes that could each be a movie of their own. This worried me a bit before starting, and I have to admit that at times I struggled to stay focused, especially during scenes that set the mood but don’t do much plot-wise. This is just a personal preference, though, and in no way I see it as a flaw. 

The dancing around each other the main characters do, sometimes literal, is frustrating but it determines an emotional build up that’s just starting to reach its peak. This is one of those shows that has me screaming if only they talked to each other, but the silences and unspoken words are so well directed and acted that it works. I struggle a lot with keeping in mind that they’re still in high school, they’re very young and I can’t expect them to act rationally just yet. 

I was really worried about Teh possibly going the insufferable Theory-of-love-khai way, and I am still not 100% sold on him. When he started helping Oh-aew again it felt like he was just doing it to make himself feel better about the whole thing. It was frustrating to see him so possessive and jealous while also so deeply in denial about his own feelings, to the point where he had me rooting for Bas instead. He was getting better, but then he fled at the end of episode 3 and now I have no clue what’s going to happen next. About this, I really have no idea if they’re going for a happy ending or a sad one. I’m really hoping it will be good, because so far there has been barely any emotional payoff for all the repressed longing and misunderstanding the show has put us through.

I do like their dynamic a lot though, I have a weak spot for childhood friends reconnecting and an ever weaker spot for informal mentor/mentee relationships. Oh-aew asking Teh to tutor him until he passes the admission exam was an almost exact mirror of Yuri on ice Yuri begging Victor to be his coach until he retires and I loved that a lot.

Now on to the one issue I have with this show: it feels too much like an art film. It reminds me of Moonlight and Call me by your name, in the way that I wasn’t able to connect with those movies because they are too perfect. They are so beautiful and carefully crafted that I can’t fully immerse myself in them. There’s a filter that stops me from relating to the characters and constantly reminds me that this is not reality. It’s pretty, it’s extremely well done, but it feels like art. It has some quirks, some scenes that feel too artificial. One scene in particular, the one where Teh buries his head in the paper Oh-aew wrote with his coconut scented pen to sniff it, which is a direct parallel to Call me by your name, bothered me in particular. Just as it felt over-the-top and purposefully weird in the movie, so it feels in the show. It’s a way of showcasing how a confused teen deals with attraction he barely understands, it’s raw and animalistic in a way, but it’s so quirky that all it accomplishes is to remind me that I’m watching an lgbt show. It makes me wonder if a scene like this would make sense in a straight relationship because here it seems to highlight how different and primal his attraction is. If I had to pinpoint it, I’d say that I have a problem with media showcasing queerness though peculiar, purposefully awkward scenes like these instead of normal kissing and cuddling.

Overall, I can’t wait to see how this show ends and I still think it’s one of the best bls to air in 2020, if not ever. It’s refreshing to see something with a big budget used well! So far my rating is 8/10, which I know is a lot lower than what everyone else seems to think but it’s still very much subject to change! Just hoping they won’t pull a Make our days count, but I doubt they’ll go there.

And now Gaya sa pelikula. Wow. Again, I knew next to nothing about this show before watching, and I was coming from a 3 hour I told sunset about you binge watch, so the bar was pretty high.

And boy, did this show deliver. I was blown away by the depth and the humor of it. It feels like the writers had fun taking all sorts of common tropes and stereotypes just to show everyone how well they can be evolved and made complex. Two strangers who somehow find themselves sharing an apartment sounds like the start of so many fanfictions out there, but it’s so well executed and interesting that you don’t even stop to think about how weak the premises for their meeting are. It doesn’t matter and it’s not even that far-fetched, either. The sister and the neighbor are also two characters that start off as extra stereotyped, but in just a few scenes they unveil an incredible depth and backstory. It blew me away.

Each character is so realistic. Everything they do and say makes sense, they all have their reasons and their past and they react accordingly, it’s so coherent. It’s impressive how everything takes place inside the house and you barely realize it because things happen and the plot moves anyways, and the way information about external events and people is conveyed is so seamless that you don’t even notice it. In only 7 episodes (so far) they have managed to give everyone a complex background and personality through the use of objects and small details and wow don’t get me started on the music.

The soundtrack is SO GOOD. I never really pay attention to music in shows but it plays a very important role here in my opinion and, well, it’s exactly the kind of music I like listening to and ahhh I just spent 4 hours playing the first kiss song on loop so I might be biased. Right from the start in episode 1, when Karl gives in to Vlad’s music and starts dancing to it, it’s established that it’s an important element to the mood of each scene. I love how the dancing I talked about for I told sunset about you comes back here, but while I saw it as a hesitant dancing around each other there, here it’s the opposite, it’s freeing and it’s about accepting yourself. And the end of episode 6 highlights this, with the beautiful quote “You are entitled to a love that lets you dance without fear and shame.” It made me cry a looooot.

I think the development of their relationship is masterfully done. It doesn’t happen too quickly nor too slowly. Karl goes through some needed shocks that act as his wake up call. When I’m watching bl shows I care the most about them feeling real and relatable. I don’t want to feel like they were written by a straight person trying to guess what it’s like to be gay. Now I didn’t look anything up about the Gaya sa pelikula writers, but I’d be very surprised if they were straight. I can relate to both Karl and Vlad for different aspects of their stories and their worries and thoughts. There was one part in particular that hit so close that I had to take a few breaks because it hurt too much. I am a lesbian, I’ve had relationship with a girl that lasted over a year, I am out to some friends but not all. I never came out to my parents, who are both very open minded and friends with a lot of gay people and would love me just as much if I told them, and yet I can’t. It’s not just that, I am terrified by the idea of them already knowing or being able to guess. When Karl freaked out over his uncle guessing, it hit me so hard because I’ve felt the same way so many times.

Episode 7 was amazing. I hate badly written drama the most, and 99% of shows can’t come up with any good reason for drama but they have to put it in there anyways and it sucks. This was the complete opposite, I adored it and I say this as a lover of fluff. It feels right, I think it’s an issue that would come up between two people like them. They are both right and the only thing that could happen there is what actually went down. I definitely think things will be fixed by the end and I am looking forward to it, but I am very glad this issue was included because it’s so important and so true to many lgbt people’s lives.

Another aspect I absolutely adored are the multiple references to lgbt theory and language, and Vlad has some of the best lines I’ve ever heard coming from a bl. When he tells Karl not to be afraid of the word, when he explains that “you don’t look gay” isn’t a compliment, when he scolds his sister for not acknowledging the things she used to say to him by covering them up with her ally act, those are all such important and educative moments that I hope everyone listens to. I love that Vlad is not correcting some ignorant bad guy, but it’s his accepting and loving friends and family that make the mistakes, because sometimes being supportive your own way isn’t enough if you’re not actively learning from the ones you want to support.

This is a 10/10 for me right now. I can’t find anything I don’t like about it. It never feels boring, it never feels overdone, it never feels cheap or unoriginal. It went straight to the top of my favorite bls.

And now I can’t help but compare the two a bit, because yes they are two different shows but right now the relationships they portray have reached the same point: there has been a climax and now the one who is more confused about his sexuality is panicking and taking a step back. It’s a coincidence that I watched both shows on the same day when their last aired episodes end in such a similar way, but it really leads me to compare the two. I don’t want to put them one against each other or say which one did it better because that’s not the point of this, they are both two amazing and important shows who are excelling in what they’re doing. 

Gaya sa pelikula is down to earth, it’s explicit and it’s straight to the point in explaining what’s going on inside each character’s head. It feels like watching real people deal with real struggles. I told sunset about you is a lot more subtle and quiet, and since we don’t really have a clear insight in the characters’ heads sometimes it’s hard to completely understand what’s going on with them. It’s a completely different way of narrating, and while Gaya sa pelikula makes me feel like I’m a part of the events, I told sunset about you feels like I’m just spectating from an outside perspective. They are different choices, but one of them ends up feeling a lot more emotional to me than the other.

To wrap it up, I highly recommend both shows and I can’t wait to see how they’ll end! They are both among the best shows of the year, both free of all those annoyingly stereotyped characters and plot points that most bls tend to overuse.

[bonnissance]

critical ranting about holby under the cut (bc I am also sick of long holby text posts bc reading is hard)  

But I have Thoughts(tm) I need to air because there are many things that really really get my goat about Serena’s current story and almost all of it is due to the fact that her entire narrative arc has been constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

To begin, I hold that this narrative arc is an example of poor storytelling. As I’ve vague discussed before, I think Elinor’s introduction+exit=the fall out of her death was very poorly constructed and executed. The pacing is wrong, the rhythm of progression is beyond clunky, and the “you fill in the blanks” between the plot points the writers are handing to the audience are too large and frequent to be of any benefit to the narrative.

They reintroduced Elinor far too briefly for anyone to actually care that the character die, because, of course, the point wasn’t that Elinor died: it was that Serena Campbell’s daughter died. Following that, they left out crucial and oh so very important scenes in Serena’s story. For instance, discussing Elinor’s condition with the Doctors and Edward, their decision to turn of the ventilator, and preparing for the funeral. Nevertheless, those plot points were left out of Serena’s narrative as a deliberate decision.

So too was the choice to leave out any depiction of Serena’s grief at home. Which in itself, I shall concede, is understandable given Holby is a medial drama situated in a work place hospital and generally only includes out of hospital scenes when large concentrations of hospital employees are there at the same time such as Albie’s and work functions, etc.

However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the trio’s house and now Dom and Issac’s domesticity. Those scenes are included because they are essential to the story those characters are telling at the time. Zosia’s early story is inherently connected to her personal life. As is Dom and Issac’s storyline necessitates the blurring of profession and personal and how Issac’s abuse alters depending on the situation. Thus, Holby has a history of included non-work place related scenes when it furthers the story they have chosen to tell.

Yet the deliberately decided against including allowing Serena to grieve in the safety and comfort of her own home, just as the arguably essential scenes above mentioned scenes were left out of scripts. In fact, that entire section of Serena’s storyline was barely even acknowledged. Now, we all know that Russell would have knocked those scenes out of the park. So leaving them out wasn’t the writers factoring in to a lack of ability on behalf of their performer. Nor do I believe they left them out because the writers were unable to write the content. On the contrary, I think Holby’s writer’s room to be more than capable of producing that type of content and doing it rather well.

It then follows that the writers made a deliberate decision to they breezed over what ought to have been a significant point of character development in favour of inserting her straight back onto the ward. To ensure that her grief and every unhealthy coping mechanism she uses to get through the day would be on full display to her colleagues, and to the audience. The writers forced Serena back onto the ward, to the same physical location of her daughter’s death, in order to deliberately blur the lines of the character’s personal tragedy with her professional existence.

They explicated unhealthy coping techniques that directly affected Serena’s behaviour towards her colleagues, and they did it without providing her with an adequate support network. 

They created an unhealthy inter-generational dynamic between Serena and Jasmine that, at times, epitomises the ‘old queers are predatory and dangerous to young women’ trope. They glazed over Serena’s panic attacks and fugue states in favour implying she’s drinking on the job. They justified the narrative shaming of Serena reaching out to the one person in the world who understood what it meant to lose their daughter: Elinor Campbell, without bothering to make it clear that problem was never Serena wanting emotional support from Edward. The problem was that she continued to try and engage with him after he made it clear he was in no way prepared to provide Serena with the care she was requesting. Once again leaving Serena without a support network as well as implying her desire for the support was unreasonable. 

They continued pushing the mentor/mentee dynamic between Jasmine and Serena to unprofessional and unhealthy levels. Now, while there is certainly examples of emotionally abusive behaviour between Serena and Jasmine, I avoid using the term “abusive” to describe their entire relationship. I don’t believe the mistreatment occurring has been sustained long enough to warrant the term. (It bears mentioning that this classification is based on my own personal experiences with emotional abuse and that I have little interest in expanding on this reasoning should anyone take issue with this statement.) Instead, I would classify this situation as incidental grooming between two people who have positioned another in an unhealthy and toxic position in their live. 

Granted, they both agreed to a mentor/mentee dynamic. However, Jasmine in no way deserves to be belittled and bullied in the work place, to have Serena use her as a project to help process her grief, or to become the focal point of Serena’s need to make sure what happened with Elinor never happens to anyone else. But nor does Serena deserve to become the source of Jasmine’s validation, to overcompensates for Jasmine’s already developed sense of unworthiness, or become a maternal care provider which Jasmine so clearly wants her to be. Both of them are using the other in horridly unhealthy ways and desperately need counselling to process their own emotional traumas. 

But once again, the writers don’t bother to make clear the actual issues in these exchanges, nor handle the fall out of these situations with the degree of seriousness issues such as these actually require. Instead, they continue to escalate things between Serena and Jasmine, which we know cumulates into Serena telling Jasmine she wishes Jasmine were dead, because this was their intention all along.

Despite the fact that Elinor was Serena’s daughter, the point of killing off her off was not to give Serena a storyline. Elinor’s death and the resulting grief, which has irrevocably changed the character at the very core, was not about Serena at all, because this entire narrative was constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

And that fact makes me furious. 

Because Holby gave us the story of a middle aged woman discovering her same-sex attraction in a situation where her desire was mutual and returned. They gave us a story in which that character was about to embark on a healthy, fulfilling, sustainable relationship that satisfied her emotional, physical, romantic and sexual wants. They implied the character was going integrate that romantic relationship with her other filial bonds and, for the first time in possibly her whole life, have her emotional needs actually met.

Then they took that character, who in universe was finally finally about to be happy, and decided to add to the other numerous instances of suffering the writers have already put her through by killing of her daughter. Killing off her daughter in her place of work only to cut short her grieving and send her right back there to suffer in the public eye.  

And they did it to give a new and barely formed character a storyline. The fact remains that Jasmine had literally millions of plausible storylines they could have gone with; so many options that would have ended with substantial character growth. She could have stopped drinking and studied harder, she could have taken up running, gotten a boyfriend or a puppy, learnt tact and become an actual decent doctor, and the character would have grown. 

Christ, she could have stubbed her toe on the edge of a bed, sworn on the ward, and gotten a dressing down from her boss about appropriate workplace vocabulary that character growth would have carried the same weight as the storyline she’s now had to endure.

They writers have irrevocably written Serena into a corner, because that character will never be the same again and there is very little they can do with her now, without actually letting the audience see the some of the most important narrative points. Moreover, they have also cut off almost all of Jasmine’s further storylines, because unless they give her a surprise pregnant with Ollie’s baby and then she miscarries after deciding to keep it (which I wouldn’t put it past them tbqh) there’s not a lot the writers can do with her that will have the same intensity and significance as what they’ve already put her through. 

In short, the Holby writers took a queer mentally ill abuse survivor and guttered her from the inside out for the sake of another character with barely touched potential. They treated that character with a level of disrespect and disregard I’m not sure I’ve seen since The L Word drowned Jenny Schecter in her neighbour’s pool and nobody really cared. Because they gave us Serena Campbell, implied that she (along with and everyone she represents) deserves to be happy, only to turn around and burn her beyond recognition for daring to hope. And they did it because they wanted to.